Constitutional and Legal Progress

The reign of Charles II is noteworthy as an era of important advances in constitutional and legal matters. The king had ceased to be absolute, and the arbitrary imposition of taxes was at an end. Feudal tenures had been abolished. The House of Commons was holding the king's ministers responsible for the king's acts, and was already inquiring into the way in which the king was spending the money granted him. The beginnings of cabinet government can faintly be seen. High commissions and star chambers were institutions of the past; jury trial was thenceforth free and little liable to interference from either king or nobility; and most important of all, a Habeas Corpus Act had been passed (1679), which declared that no man should be kept in prison for an indefinite length of time without a trial. This act provided that every man charged with an offence should be tried at the first opportunity.

James II

James II was a far abler man than his brother, the late king, and had he been possessed of a little of the latter's shrewdness and tact, might have succeeded well as a ruler. He was persistent and industrious, loyal to his word and his friends. He had had considerable experience with matters of business and government, having been head of the admiralty till 1673, and regent in Scotland during the last years of his brother's reign. But like his father, he was narrow-minded and intolerant, obstinate and merciless, and always failed to understand the sentiments of his people until he had gone too far in his course to withdraw. While Charles II had been able not only to steer his way safely for twenty-five years, but even to prove himself in the end a stronger king than he had been at his accession, James succeeded in bringing matters to a crisis after a reign of less than three years.

His failure is the more remarkable, inasmuch as he became king when circumstances were most favorable to him; when the Whigs were discredited; when the bulk of the nation, resenting the violence of Shaftesbury and his associates, and disturbed by the Rye House plot, were ready to give a Stuart, with a reputation for honesty, a fair trial. In three short years these conditions were exactly reversed, a result for which the king himself was wholly responsible.

Uprisings of Argyle and Monmouth: the Bloody Assizes

James began well. He promised "to preserve the government as by law established." He released from the Tower Roman Catholics and Quakers alike, and approved the sentence of fine, flogging, and imprisonment imposed by the courts on Titus Oates as a perjurer. Parliament, made up of members who owed their election to the influence of the government, proved highly favorable to the king, and made large grants of supplies. Matters seemed to be prosperous both for the Tory party and for the king.

But the Whigs, though beaten and exiled, were by no means in despair. Under the leadership of Argyle in Scotland and of Monmouth in England, they attempted to recover their power. In May, 1685, Argyle landed at the firth of Clyde, and a month later Monmouth landed at Lyme in Dorset. Argyle's expedition was foolhardy in the extreme. He failed to find the support that he had expected in Scotland, and in June was captured and executed. Monmouth's venture at first gave more promise of success. The southwestern counties were ready to rise in his support, the local militia was already favorable to him, and the manufacturing classes of the towns, such as Taunton, Exeter, and Bristol, and even London, were eager to furnish arms and funds, should a successful leader appear. But Monmouth, though romantic and dashing, was incompetent and cowardly. He got into trouble with his colleagues, wasted time at Lyme and Taunton, and when, at last, he was ready to act, found the king's troops strongly intrenched against him. At Sedgemoor (July 5, 1685) he was defeated. He fled from the field of battle, only to be captured and taken to London, where, begging piteously for life, he was beheaded.

Monmouth deserves little pity, and the failure of his cause arouses little regret, for, in all probability, he would have made a worthless king. But the punishment inflicted on his followers, the too faithful friends of an undeserving leader, stirs the soul to wrath. Colonel Kirke, with his soldiers; Kirke's Lambs, as they were called, was sent through the counties to wreak summary vengeance. Many rebels were seized and hanged on the spot, while scores of others were thrust into jail to await the coming of the justices. Jeffreys, the chief of the justices, though no worse than others of his time, aroused public horror because of the enjoyment he took in the work of the Bloody Assizes. He badgered, bullied, and sneered at his prisoners, and carried out a cruel law in a cruel manner. Three hundred prisoners were hanged, eight hundred were transported as slaves to the West Indies to endure a living death, while hundreds of others were flogged and imprisoned. James showed that the master was little better than the servant, for he made Jeffreys lord high chancellor of England.

Consequence of the Rebellion: the Roman Catholic Policy of James

The Monmouth rebellion was important, not only for its immediate, but also for its ultimate, results. Its failure undoubtedly gave new strength to the government, and the ease with which it was suppressed led James to entertain false ideas regarding his own power. He believed that the time had come when he could reestablish Roman Catholicism in England, and he hoped to carry out his plan by exempting Roman Catholics from the laws, passed during the reign of Charles II, against liberty of conscience and freedom of worship.

Consequently, in November, 1685, when parliament reassembled, James demanded the repeal of the Test Act, which provided that no Roman Catholics could hold office in England. Parliament probably would not have repealed this act under any circumstances; but its determination not to do so was strengthened by the fact that Louis XIV, only a short time before (October 18, 1685), had revoked the Edict of Nantes in France, and had driven from that country thousands upon thousands of Huguenots. Though a Tory body and friendly to the king, parliament rejected the king's proposal; but to show its good will, it voted James a large additional grant for the increase of the army.

Angry and disappointed, the king prorogued parliament and undertook to obtain his end in another way. Claiming the right as sovereign to grant special dispensation to any one who had broken a law, he at once applied this claim to the Test Act, and appointed Sir Edward Hales, a Roman Catholic, to a colonelship, in the new army. That he should not be without legal support for what he had done, he had Hales's coachman inform against his master for violating the act. The case was tried before a packed bench of judges and decided in the king's favor. Immediately James began to shower appointments on Roman Catholics, and Protestant England was confronted, not only with the overthrow of its constitutional liberties, but also with a possible Roman Catholic control of the government.

James, encouraged by his success, applied his policy to the affairs of the church. For trifling offences he removed clergy of the church of England and put Roman Catholics in their place. He established an ecclesiastical commission in defiance of the act of parliament passed in 1641, and disciplined those of the clergy who opposed him. He attacked the universities, appointing one Massey, a Roman Catholic, as dean of Christ church, Oxford, removing the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, and driving out the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, who refused to elect as their president one of his own appointees. He received the papal nuncio in 1687; the first nuncio in England since Mary's reign,

and conferred on him distinguished honors. He openly encouraged the Roman Catholics by authorizing the founding of schools and monasteries, and by encouraging them to issue pamphlets and books defending their faith. Then, as if to show that what he had done would be, defended, if necessary by force, he established an army of thirteen thousand men at Hounslow Heath, near London, and sent Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, to Ireland as lord lieutenant, to remodel the Irish army and, as was generally believed, to drive the Protestants from the island.

Slowly these many measures had their effect. The English people saw Roman Catholicism gradually creeping over the land. Tories, who hitherto had been devoted to the king, began to see that, by supporting the Stuarts and defending the doctrine of passive obedience, they were encouraging the success of the Roman Catholic cause, which they hated more than they did that of the Whigs.